64 



MODERN HISTORY, 



[Pakt VI. 



A.D. Altliougli the passage by the Cape of Good Hope 

 1766. \^^^ been in use for more than two hundred years, no 

 vessel bearing the flag of England had yet been seen 

 on the Indian Ocean. Portugal, in virtue of her prio- 

 rity of discovery and under pretext of a Bull granted by 

 Martin V.^, claimed the exclusive na\dgation of those 

 seas, — a right which she asserted by force of arms^, and 

 in which the other powers of Europe at that time were 

 not sufficiently interested to contest it with her ; and it 

 w^as not till after the return of Drake from his circum- 

 navigation of the globe in 1579, that Queen Elizabeth 

 proclaimed the right of her own subjects to na\'igate 

 the Indian seas on an equahty with those of Spain. ^ In 

 pm'suance of this bold declaration, the first vessels that 

 ever sailed direct from England to India w^ere de- 

 spatched in 1591, not, however, to trade with the natives, 

 facilities for which had not yet been ascertained, but 

 to " cruize upon the Portuguese." ^ The expedition 

 Avas unfortunate, the adnural perished, and Lancaster, 

 the sm'vi\dng officer, on his way home from Malacca 

 touched at Ceylon, and " ankered at a place called 

 Punta del Galle^ about the 3rd of December, 1592."^ 

 Thus the " EdAvard Bonaventure " was the first British 

 ship, as Ealph Fitch had been the first British subject, 

 that had visited Ceylon. 



Nearly two centuries elapsed after the appearance 

 of the English on the continent of India before their 



^ Tlie Bull of Martin Y. was re- 

 newed by tlie succeedinf^ Popes 

 Nicholas and Sextus. — Puilcilas, vol. 

 i. p. 6. 



^ Mill's Hist. Brit. India, b. i. 

 ch. i. p. 6. 



3 INIacpherson's Annah of Com- 

 merce, vol. ii. p. IGO. Long after 

 the power of the Portngiiese bad de- 

 clined, the Dutch, as their succes- 

 sors, maintained the same indefen- 

 sible doctrine of the monopoly of 

 Indian trade ; and in Ceylon, next 

 to the duty enjoined on successive 



governors to seciu-e peace with the 

 King of Kandy, was the iuj miction 

 to exclude all other European na- 

 tions from the trade of the island, 

 " xceeren van allc andere J^iirojnanen 

 van Cei/hn." — VALENTrN", eh. xv. 

 p. .343. It was only at the conclusion 

 of the war %A'ith Holland in 1 784 that 

 Great Britain insisted on a formal 

 declaration of the free navigation of 

 the Indian seas. 



4 Haeris, vol. i. p. 875. PrijvojsT, 

 IIi,s-t. Gen. (Ics Voy.. t. i. p. '5.57. 



* IIakltjyt, vol. ii. p. 107. 



